Nikki Baird

Nikki Baird is managing partner at Retail Systems Research, the only research company run by retailers for the retail industry. She focuses on trends impacting the consumer-retailer relationship, along with their supply chain and marketing implications. She has written research and articles on topics ranging from in-store marketing and technology, store performance management, supply chain and multi-channel fulfillment, retailer-manufacturer collaboration, merchandising, and loyalty and promotions management. She has been quoted as a subject matter expert in The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and National Public Radio. She has been a retailer, a software provider and a consultant before becoming an analyst. She lives in Denver.

Posts by Nikki Baird:

At Retail Systems Research we have been scratching our heads of late about the difference between Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics. As a group we seem to have come down primarily on the side of the definition that describes analytics as the tool and BI as the output. In that context, BI is something bigger […]

I recently attended Internet Retailer’s Mobile Marketing & Commerce Forum; and instead of attempting to organize everything I learned into some kind of story or structure and say that it all ties nicely together, I’ll give you a taste of what I experienced, which is an onslaught of lessons, factoids, and experiences shared by every […]

At this summer’s Online Retailer conference and expo in Australia, the biggest attitude difference that I saw between Australian and U.S. retailers emerged during a panel session at the event. The panelists spoke about a brick-and-mortar executive attitude that apparently is prevalent right now in Australia. The attitude can be summed up like this: “If […]

I had the privilege of spending a week this summer in Sydney, Australia, attending the Online Retailer conference and expo. I was really excited to go not least because it was my first opportunity to go to Australia, but also because I was very interested to get an on-the-ground glimpse of Australian retailing and how […]

Talking about customer relationship management in retail has been problematic for me for a very long time. I still get positive feedback, and reports from readers that it is still relevant, on research we published in 2007 on loyalty programs: “Getting Loyalty Programs Back to Loyalty.” CRM has long been a bad word in retail, […]

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